Original Article

Measurement of Social Capital at School and Neighborhood
among Young People
Minoru Takakura*, Yuiko Hamabata**, Masaru Ueji*** and Atsushi Kurihara*****Faculty of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus
Uehara 207, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0215 Japan
minoru@med.u-ryukyu.ac.jp**
Graduate School of Health Sciences, University of the Ryukyus
Uehara 207, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0215 Japan***
Faculty of Education, Ibaraki University
2-1-1 Bunkyo, Mito, Ibaraki 310-8512 Japan****
Faculty of Education, Saga University
1 Honjo, Saga-city, Saga 840-8502 Japan[Received December 20, 2013 ; Accepted March 8, 2014]

Background: Although most studies on social capital and health relate to adults, there is currently
an increased number of studies focusing on young people. Most previous studies on social capitaland health among young people have assessed social capital in residential communities, and may
have thought little of that in schools. Moreover, measures to assess social capital among young
people have been little verified their psychometric properties. This study thus aimed to develop
self-rating scales of social capital at school and neighborhood among young people and to evaluate
psychometric properties of the scales.
Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 1,362 students in grades 10-12
at six public high schools across Ibaraki, Saga, and Okinawa prefecture, Japan in 2011. As forquestionnaire items of social capital, we selected seven items of cognitive social capital at school, fiveitems of cognitive social capital at neighborhood, and each one item of structural social capital atschool and neighborhood. Reliability analyses included internal consistency and test-retest stability.
Factor analysis was used to evaluate the construct validity of the cognitive measures. Criterionrelated validity was examined the associations with safety at school and neighborhood and healthindicators, such as self-rated health, depressive symptoms, and physical activities.
Results: Factor analysis showed that cognitive social capital constructs among young people
comprised of cognitive social capital at school, which included trust and reciprocity within students
and trust in teachers, and cognitive social capital at neighborhood, which included trust andreciprocity within neighbors. The internal consistency of the scale was good (Cronbach's alpha =0.92-0.94), and its stability was also adequate (test-retest reliability = 0.48-0.81). As was expected,
the cognitive social capital scales were associated with safety at school and neighborhood andsome health indicators, indicating acceptable criterion-related validity. Only the structural social
capital scale at school was associated with physical activity, while the structural social capital atneighborhood was with safety at neighborhood.
Conclusions: Psychometric evaluation of most measurement of social capital among young peopleindicated adequate validity and reliability. However, the validity of the structural social capital scale
was inconclusive.
Keywords: psychometric scale, validity, reliability[School Health Vol.10, 1-8, 2014]

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1Takakura M., et al.

I. Introduction
Social capital has been considered as a potentialsocial determinant of health, and there is currently
an upsurge of interest in studying the relationships
between social capital and health1). Although different
definitions of social capital have been proposed, mostof them generally define it as “resources composed ofor derived from trust, and/or norms, and/or networks,
which facilitate collective actions”2). Social capital
includes structural components such as network andsocial participation, and cognitive components suchas trust and norms3), and these two components interms of social relations are about what people “do”
and what people “feel”, respectively 4). Moreover,those are measured both as individual attribute and/or
a group attribute1).
High levels of social capital in society may
influence health-related behaviors by promoting rapid
diffusion of health information, increasing adoptionof healthy behavioral norms, and exerting social
control over deviant behaviors5). Furthermore, it has
been considered to act as a buffer to social disparity
in health 6). These hypotheses may be applicableto young people group. In recent years, there is anincreased number of studies on social capital andhealth related to the young people 7). Yet, there aresome key issues still remaining in the measurementof social capital among young people as described
below.
First, the issue of cultural and backgrounddifferences. Social capital may differ between
different cultures and social backgrounds8). The social
capital components of Japanese youth may not beappropriate in other countries, and vice versa. Further
empirical research is needed to adapt the region andculture differences on the relationships between social
capital and health.
Second, the issue of rating scale measurement.
Single-item question is commonly to measuresocial capital in many studies9). The use of singleitem questions in many cases may not necessarily
demonstrate statistical robustness, and the use oftheoretically and statistically constructed synthetic
indicators thus have been suggested 10) 11). Somescales assessed the psychometric properties onadult populations 8) 9). Regarding young people, a
psychometric evaluation on social capital scale has
been only developed by Almgren et al.12), and it could
not be found in other studies13-18).
2

Third, the issue of raters. Many of the previous
studies obtained social capital responses from existing
macro statistics or through adults’ perceptions such as
parents, local residents, and teachers. These problems
can eventually cause young people’s responses
being filtered through the interpretations of adults’perspectives, and their exact responses could not be
accurately assessed 19-21). More research on young
people’s perspectives is thus needed22) 23).
F o u r t h , t h e i s s u e o f t a rg e t g r o u p s / a r e a s .
Geographically-defined groups have been usedon adult’s social capital and health studies, whilst
community context with its social space such as
school and neighborhood might be more appropriate
on young people for accurately reflecting what ishappening with their daily life and health24). School,
where young people spend most of their daytime
hours by involving in school activities and interaction
with friends and teachers, is an important community
for constructing social relations in young people25).
Hence, school has strong influence on youth’s
behavior and attitudes 26), as well as their healthoutcomes27). However, most previous studies on social
capital and youth health have assessed social capitalin residential communities19) 23), and may have thought
little of that in schools21).
Taken together, an adequate methodology is needed
to elaborate associations between social capital andhealth among Japanese youth. The aim of the present
study was thus to develop a self-rating scale formeasuring social capital among young people and toevaluate the reliability and validity of the scale.
In this study, we defined social capital as “trust,norms such as reciprocity, and network in the society”
and distinguished cognitive components fromstructural components 2). School and neighborhood
were then assessed as reference groups. As reflectionof the diversity of social capital concepts, someintermediate variables in the middle of social
capital and health outcome, including sense of
belonging, enjoyment of area, neighborhood quality(noise, litter, graffiti, etc.), crime, and security,
have been sometimes regarded as social capital 3).
Correspondingly, social control and social support
have been considered not only as social capital but
also the outcome of social capital3) 28). In the present
study, conceptually ambiguous variables such as theintermediate variables or the outcome variables were
carefully excluded from social capital items29).

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Social Capital among Youth

II. Methods
1. Participants and study procedure
This study was performed with a conveniencesample of 1,362 students in grades 10 through 12(ages 15-18 years) enrolled in six high schools
in Ibaraki, Saga, and Okinawa prefecture, Japan,
including one general high school and one vocational
high school from each prefecture. The schools wereintentionally chosen from the research fields ofthe authors. The selected vocational high schools
were a technical high school and two commercial
high schools. The study sample for further analyses
consisted of 1,241 respondents (45% males, 55%
females; 34% 10th grade, 32% 11th grade, 34%
12th grade; 31% Ibaraki, 36% Saga, 33% Okinawa;
and 53% general high school, 47% vocational highschool), excluding who were absent from school
when the survey was conducted (54 students),
declining their participation on the survey (63students), and with no gender information (4students). To examine the stability of scales, followup survey was conducted two weeks apart to 118
unidentified respondents from a school other thandescribed above.
Using written instructions provided by researchers,classroom teachers conducted a self-administeredanonymous questionnaire in class from June to July
2011 (survey was also conducted in September 2011at one school as per requested convenient time).
After being informed about the nature and intent of
the study, both in writing and verbally, all students
attending the class were requested to complete andreturn the questionnaire sealed in an unmarked

envelope. Students were free to decline participation.
The study protocol was approved by theInstitutional Review Board on EpidemiologicalResearch Ethics of University of the Ryukyus.

2. Measures
On the basis of previous studies 7) 13-18) , wedeveloped the question items to indicate cognitiveand structural components of social capital. Cognitivesocial capital at school such as trust and reciprocity
in students and teachers (Table 1, x1-x7), as wellas in their neighbors at neighborhood (Table 1,x8-x12) were assessed using a five-point rating
scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.
Structural social capital was measured based on social
participation, particularly participation in organizedactivities 30-32). The frequency of participation was
rated on six-point scale, from “not involved” to “7days per week”, including organized activities atschool such as student council, sports- and culturalbased extracurricular activities, and others, as well asorganized activities at neighborhood such as youth
association, sports club, culture/learning circle, music
circle, volunteer activity, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts,
YMCA/YWCA, elementary school or junior highschool alumni associations, family gathering, andothers. In the present study, since the participation
rate in organized activities of respondents was very
low, and in order to assess the presence or absenceof social participation in the same way of previous
studies11) 33), a dichotomized dummy variable for eachstructural social capital at school and neighborhood
was then created, taking point 1 if the respondents
were participated in any organized activities, and 0

Table 1 Descriptive statistics and factor analysis of cognitive social capital items

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3Takakura M., et al.

otherwise11) 33).
Self-rated health, depressive symptoms, andphysical activities, as well as safety at school andneighborhood were used in assessment of criterionrelated validity that is predictive and concurrent
validity of the social capital scales. In the field ofsocial epidemiology, social capital has been discussed
as a potential determinant of health1). Since previous
studies suggested that social capital has been linked tohealth and health-related behaviors, such as self-rated
health11) 12) 18), depressive symptoms17), and physicalactivities13) 20), we thus used these health indicators
as the external criteria of predictive validity. As
aforementioned, safety at school and neighborhood
has been considered as intermediate variables in
the middle of social capital and health outcome andsometimes as social capital variables 3). Thus, we
adapted these safety variables as the external criteriaof concurrent validity. Self-rated health was evaluatedusing a four-point rating scale, i.e. “excellent”,“good”, “fair”, and “poor”, to the question “howwould you describe your current state of health?”.
Depressive symptoms were assessed using Japaneseversion of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies
Depression Scale34) 35). Physical activity was assessedusing questions adapted from Patient-centered
Assessment and Counseling for Exercise plus
Nutrition, and was classified into “active group (1)”and “inactive group (0)” as a dummy variable36) 37).
Safety at school and neighborhood were evaluatedusing a five-point rating scale, from “strongly
agree” to “strongly disagree” to the statement “I feelsafe at school” and “I feel safe at neighborhood”.
Although we assessed it with a question intended tocapture a global perception of safety at school andneighborhood, Samdal et al.38) also measured safety
at school through a single item and found that school
safety was strongly related to student satisfaction
with school. Similarly, Duncan et al. 39) surveyedneighborhood safety by a single question and foundthat neighborhood safety was associated withbeliefs about gang activities and witnessed violence,suggesting the validity of perceived neighborhood
safety.

3. Data analysis
To verify the factorial validity of cognitive social
capital scale, those items were evaluated using factor
analysis (maximum likelihood method and promax
4

rotation). The number of factors extracted was two as
for the two components at school and neighborhood.
The concurrent validity of social capital was
examined from the association between social capitaland intermediate variable items of safety at schooland neighborhood. Predictive validity was thenassessed by the associations between social capitaland self-rated health, depressive symptoms, andphysical activity. All relations were analyzed with
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (ρ). The
reliability of the scale was evaluated using internalconsistency (Cronbach’s α coefficient) and test-retest
stability (ρ). The statistical significance level was at
0.1%.

III. Results
Means, standard deviations, kurtosis, andskewness of cognitive social capital are shown in
Table 1. These descriptive statistics indicated thatthe distributions of the item scores were not biased.
Moreover, the histograms were found in unimodal
shape (data not shown). Meanwhile, the mean,
standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis valuesof structural social capital at school were 0.67, 0.47,-0.7, and -1.5, respectively, whilst at neighborhood,the values were 0.36, 0.48, 0.6, and -1.7 respectively.
Table 1 concurrently shows the results of factor
analysis. From the factor loadings, the first factor wasthen interpreted as cognitive social capital at school
and the second factor as cognitive social capital atneighborhood.
Given the above findings, we developed cognitivesocial capital at school scale which is composedof seven items, as well as cognitive social capitalat neighborhood which is composed of five items.
Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of the scalescores and variables as appropriateness criteria, as
well as Cronbach’s α coefficients and test-retest
reliability coefficients of the scale scores. The αcoefficients of each scale were 0.92 to 0.94 and thetest-retest reliability coefficients were 0.48 to 0.81.
There were no gender and school type differences inthe scale scores of cognitive social capital at schooland neighborhood. Males and vocational high school
students reported higher scores of structural social
capital at school than females and general high school
students (0.74, 0.72 vs. 0.62, 0.63, respectively),
whereas females and general high school students
reported higher scores on structural social capital at
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Social Capital among Youthneighborhood than males and vocational high school
students (0.38, 0.38 vs. 0.33, 0.33, respectively).
As for the concurrent validity, we recognizedassociations between each social capital scale andsafety question as the expected directions (Table
3). Cognitive social capital at school was positively
associated with safety at school (ρ=0.63), and thesame relation was also observed for neighborhood
setting (0.51). Structural social capital atneighborhood had weak positive associations withsafety at neighborhood (0.11).
Table 3 also shows the associations betweensocial capital scales and health indicators.
Regarding cognitive social capital, thoroughly,
positive associations were found at both schooland neighborhood settings for self-rated health andphysical activity (0.18 to 0.31 and 0.15 to 0.16,
respectively), while it had negative correlations
with depressive symptoms (-0.25 to -0.39). Of thestructural social capital, only physical activities atschool setting had a positive correlation at 0.37.

IV. Discussion
The present study developed self-rating scales ofsocial capital at school and neighborhood, where are
regarded as the important community for youth, andevaluated the psychosomatic properties of the scales.
As a result, high internal consistency of each scalewith more than 0.9 of α coefficients and adequate
stability with 0.48 to 0.81 of test-retest reliability
coefficients were confirmed. In addition, theconcurrent and predictive validity of cognitive social
capital tested was directive relevance and generally
acceptable, but those of structural social capital atschool and neighborhood were not mostly supported
because only a few associations with external criteria
of validity were observed.
There are a few studies in social capital-related
psychometric evaluation focusing on young people.
The only previous study of Almgren et al. 12)
developed, using principal component analysis,
social capital scales comprised of “positive school
affiliation”, “safe learning environment”, “social
network cohesion”, and “parents having knowledge

Table 2 Social capital scale scores, alpha coefficients, and test-retest reliability coefficients

Table 3 Relationships between social capital and safety at school and neighborhood and health indicators (Spearman's ρ)

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5

Takakura M., et al.

of friends’ plans”. However, as those include
subscales regarded as intermediate variables andsubscales with a low internal consistency, it does notseem to be common scales. Morgan & Haglund 13)
assessed sense of belonging, autonomy and control,and social networking of young people in family,
school, and neighborhood settings as part of the
WHO Health Behaviour in School-aged Children
study (HBSC), while Boyce et al. 14) and Elgar etal.15) created cognitive social capital measurements
at neighborhood using HBSC data. Furthermore,
Khawaja et al.16), Aslund, Starrin, & Nilsson17), andBorges et al.18) developed various social capital scales
at neighborhood setting, but their results excluding
various essential psychometric evaluations such as
factorial validity, or including intermediate variables
and outcome variables in the scale items, following
ambiguous constructs. Hence, the present study
strived to measure with narrowing down to trust,reciprocity, and network at school and neighborhood,chipping off previous ambiguous concepts.
As for the result of factor analysis, the cognitivesocial capital was divided into two constructs, namely,
cognitive social capital at school and neighborhood.
The scale items could capture cognitive social capitalconstructs at school, including trust and reciprocity
within students and trust toward teachers, as well as
cognitive social capital at neighborhood, including
trust and reciprocity within neighbors, which are
typical cognitive social capital concepts in the theoryof social capital40). Of the structural social capital,
the degree of social networks based on presenceor absence of social participation in organizedactivities were assessed. It is important to distinguishthe cognitive social capital from structural social
capital because these two components have different
associations with health outcomes3).
The present study demonstrated positive
correlations between most of social capital variables
and safety variables at both school and neighborhood
settings, and partly confirmed concurrent validityof the social capital scales. These results were inline with the study of Asakura41) who reported thatneighborhood safety was associated with individual
cognitive social capital in junior high school students.
Safety at school and neighborhood are considered asintermediate variables of social capital3), so it could
be reasoned that higher levels of social capital atschool and neighborhood can increase safety at bothsettings.
6

Although the strength of correlations mightvary depending on health indicators tested, thepredictive validity for health indicators of cognitivesocial capital scales was sufficient and directive
relevance. In agreement with previous studies 42-44),
the cognitive social capital had stronger and moreconsistent associations with self-rated health anddepressive symptoms compared to that of structuralsocial capital. Students who had higher levels ofcognitive social capital at school and neighborhood
were more likely to be physically active. This finding
was consistent with previous studies that havedemonstrated that students’ perceptions of cognitivesocial capital at neighborhood were associated with
their physical activities20), as well as their parents’
perceptions about them45). Structural social capitalat school was positively associated with physicalactivity, suggesting the influence of participation in
sports-based extracurricular activities.
Recently, researchers have emphasized theimportance of Internet-based linkages such as
online social network sites, which serve as thefoundation of social capital 46) . Previous studies
showed that the usage of Facebook, a popular social
network site among young people, was positively
associated with the amount of social capital 46) 47).
In addition, Facebook use was found to interact
with psychological well-being, suggesting greater
benefits for users with low self-esteem and low
life satisfaction46). On the other hand, some studies
showed that online harassment such as spreading ofrumors and sexual solicitation was relatively frequent
among adolescents48). It was also pointed out thatsocial network site usage might cause a variety ofnegative consequences that imply the decrease inreal-life community involvement and worse academic
performance, as well as relationship problems 49).
Thus, online social network sites may have both thebenefit and harm aspects. Although the present study
did not address online social media issues, further
research is needed to focus on the relevance of onlinesocial media as a resource of social capital.
In conclusion, the present study provided adequate
reliability evidence of the measurement of social
capital among young people. Moreover, the validity ofcognitive social capital scale was also acceptable, butthat of structural social capital scale was inconclusive.
Further development is still required for standardized
psychometric scale with a larger population.

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Social Capital among YouthAcknowledgments

This work was supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant Number

23300246.

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8

Name:
Minoru Takakura
Affiliation:
Faculty of Medicine, University of the
Ryukyus

Address:
Uehara 207, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0215 Japan
Brief Biographical History:
2005 Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus
2010 Dean, Graduate School of Health Sciences, University of
the Ryukyus
Main Works:• Takakura M. Does social trust at school affect students’smoking and drinking behavior in Japan? Social Science &Medicine 72:299-306, 2011
• Takakura M, Wake N, Kobayashi M. The contextual effect ofschool satisfaction on health-risk behaviors in Japanese highschool students. Journal of School Health 80:544-551, 2010
Membership in Learned Societies:• Japanese Association of School Health• Japanese Society of Health Education and Promotion• Japan Epidemiological Association

School Health Vol.10, 1-8, 2014
http://www.shobix.co.jp/sh/hp/main.htm